Parental phobias, Mom Cliques, and 3 year olds.

Marissa Jaret Winokur is now blogging for People.com, and posted a story about mean moms and a low moment when she accidently locked her son in her car.

I can sympathize. As soon as my kids were born, my biggest fear was locking them in the car. I would triple check to make sure the keys were in the diaper bag. Now that they’re bigger and we have the child locks activated, I know it’s worse- since they’d know they were stuck inside the car. So I don’t leave the front seat without my keys in my hand. I can understand her frustration and panic- while I have tend to have a cool head in those sort of situations… it is easy to think of all those horror stories about kids dying in cars and panic.

Now, the one thing that I sort of agree with- but not her words precisely, are the way that some moms watch and judge. Just yesterday, I had a moment where I knew that eyes of judging mothers were on me. Every day after school, the boys climb aboard a little wooden trolley outside the school. They’ve become pretty well trained, and the play for a minute, then we go. Only today, the youngest one decided to exercise his 3 year old stubbornness, and sat down just out of my reach. If I’d walk to the otherside, he’d scoot away and say no. This went on for a bit, and I tried the old “Goodbye, then” bit- only the oldest one raised too much of a fuss to really start to walk away.

Meanwhile, the mothers just watched. It would have taken a moment for one of them to walk over and help me corner him. But, no. Instead, they just watched. Ultimately the Oldest Kidlet helped me and we walked back to the car, while I (loudly) informed the littlest one that when we got home we wouldn’t finish the movie we’d been watching- instead we would all have lunch and then I’d pick the entertainment.

So what didn’t I agree with? Marissa said that it was the mothers who wore the skinny jeans and took twice daily showers who judged her, since she was wearing workout clothes. I hate to break it to her- but no matter what, at school, there will always be someone who judges you. At my son’s school, most of the mothers wear nice workout clothes (that they like never actually work out in). I wear skinny jeans, and usually something cute with a bit too much eye makeup. Not because I want to impress anyone, but because it’s just who I am. I won’t even get into the fact that they look at my little Saturn with a bit of disgust.

Not that I think she’ll ever read this, but Marissa. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you’re put together or not- there’ll always be someone who’s watching and quietly judging. While friends are supportive no matter what- once we step on school grounds, it’s as though we’re back in school ourselves. Cliques everywhere. The moms who actually work out hang together. The ones with designer shades and Acuras all stand together. The only thing you can do is be yourself and ignore the nonsense- the same way we used to in school.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.